The Food and Drug Administration in August rejected claims
that the popular anti-depressant drug Prozac is connected to murder, suicide, and other
illnesses. The decision followed a year-long campaign by the Church of Scientology - a
longtime opponent of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs - to ban U.S. sales of the drug,
manufactured by Eli Lilly & Co.

The FDA found that the Citizens Commission for Human
Rights, a Scientology front organization, had not demonstrated any links between suicidal
thinking or violent behavior and Prozac, which is expected to achieve some $1 billion in
sales to over 4 million people this year. Lilly hailed the FDA action against what it
called the Scientologists' "campaign of dangerous deception" that is "a
menace to the public health as it attempts to frighten patients away." The FDA said
that data presented by Scientology "provide no way of distinguishing the role of the
patients' underlying medical condition and the role of the drug in causing these suicidal
events." Indeed, said the FDA, "depression itself is highly associated with
suicide. . . [and] assertions that Prozac leads depressed patients to obsess more about
suicide than depressed patients not on the drug cannot be substantiated."

The National Mental Health Association has said that Prozac
is an extremely useful anti-depressant. And the American Psychiatric Association said the
FDA had "chosen science over sensationalism," and that "it is depression,
the illness, which kills by causing suicide in as many as one in six patients."

Scientology, which treats its members through therapy that
has been denounced as quackery by psychiatrists and other doctors, has attacked other
drugs and all anti-depressants. (From "Scientologists Fail to Persuade FDA on
Prozac," Wall Street Journal, 8/13/91, B1, B3.)

Scientology Attack

The Scientology attack on Prozac, apart from the studied
encouragement of a host of lawsuits asking hundreds of millions in damages against Eli
Lilly, has included a massive advertising and public relations campaign involving church
leaders doing the talk-show circuit and a fee-based public relations wire service
providing information on the issue.

The campaign escalated to unprecedented levels in the wake
of the May Time magazine cover story, highly critical of Scientology, with a series of
full-page ads - and two full-color booklet inserts - in USA Today promoting Scientology
and its founder L. Ron Hubbard and decrying Time and Lilly. The overall campaign, which
cost $2 million, seems to have caused Lilly's sales to drop significantly in the U.S.

Remarking on Scientology's use of the media, a Lilly vice
president said, "Other groups have known how to market a message. The difference here
is that the Scientologists have bottomless pockets and absolutely no regard for facts or
the scientific method." Scientology president Heber Jentzsch, for his part, says that
the church "couldn't trust the media to get it right" about Scientology's
opposition to "the killer drug" so the group used "advocacy
advertising" to make its point.

In so doing, Scientology has taken advertising to a level
some find disturbing. "It's a new genre, but it's being used increasingly," said
Rance Crain, editor-in-chief of Advertising Age. Advertising is being used in ways it was
never intended to be used. There is a real danger here that it is going to weaken the
efficacy and believability of all advertising. It concerns a lot of us." (From
"Scientologist campaign shakes drug firm, advertising industry," by Michael
Tackett, Chicago Tribune, 8/15/91, 17, 20.)

Ex-Scientologist Being Helped by Prozac

A former personal aide to Scientology founder L. Ron
Hubbard has come forward to say that Prozac and therapy have finally stopped the
depression and suicidal ideation from which she had suffered since 1976, despite treatment
by Scientology methods. Hana Whitfield, a South African-born nurse who came to this
country in the mid-'60s after being introduced to Scientology, told the Psychiatric Times,
"I have to speak out. The Scientologists choose the most prominent psychiatrists and
the most successful drugs to attack. That's why they attacked Ritalin, and that's why they
are now attacking Prozac." Mrs. Whitfield said that she had had a mental block toward
seeking therapy because of the hatred for psychiatry taught by Hubbard and maintained by
his followers. Once the block was broken by reading a book on mind control, she realized,
she says, that "Auditors [Scientology counselors] are unlicensed practitioners who
don't know they are putting people into trance states and using desensitization techniques
that appear to work for a time but then the problem recurs or is replaced by another
one."

Mrs. Whitfield,
who says she continues to suffer from harassment by Scientology-hired private
investigators for her outspokenness, recounted what Hubbard said in her presence about
psychiatry. "The gist was that psychiatry was intent on destroying Dianetics
[Hubbard's philosophy] and Scientology because it was the Scientology's War only practice
that could cure people who had been treated by psychiatrists." (From "Prozac
Frees Ex-Scientology Leader from Depression," Psychiatric Times, June 1991, 1,
24-25.)

Psychiatry Responds

"The disingenuously named Citizens Commission on Human
Rights is a Scientology group at war with psychiatry, its primary competitor, and indeed
the one profession that has the wherewithal to identify the way Scientology victimizes
vulnerable individuals," said Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration
director Frederic Goodwin, M.D., at this year's annual American Psychiatric Association
meeting in New Orleans. "Obviously, their big target right now is Prozac, but that's
simply a target of opportunity. Ritalin was the previous target. Whenever a drug becomes
highly potent in the public mind, they'll go after it. The point to remember is that
Scientology's war on psychiatry is part of a larger war on medicine."

Despite this recognition, Cult Awareness Network
executive director Cynthia Kisser criticizes the APA for failing to take a critical stand
on Scientology and other destructive cults. "Scientology has been able to get a free
ride because APA has not taken an official position on mind control," said Kisser.
(From "Members React to Campaign Discrediting Prozac, Psychiatry," by Richard
Karel, Psychiatric News, 6/7/91, 18, 30.)